Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

About This Item:

Title: The Powhatans and other Woodland Indians as Travelers Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Helen C. Rountree # of Pages: 17 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2017-11-10 08:56:20 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:18 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:18

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 17  

30 POWHATAN FOREIGN RELATIONS newsy by the custom of leaving markings on trees as one passed by.*? Sometimes the marks merely reassured one of being on the right path; ac other times they represented news of recent campaigns or threats of bodily harm to pursuing enemies. Waterways where possible, overland where necessary—that summarizes Indian people’s preferences in routes to travel throughout the Eastern Woodlands. Paths could and did lead in all directions, including along waterways.”’ Bur canoes could hold baggage as well as people, and net much more effort was required to propel them than if they held only people. It is not surprising, therefore, that many early accounts of Indian travel include mention of long stretches covered by water. Waterways were central to the Powhatans and other riverine Algonquianspeakers, since they supplied food as well as transportation.** Dugout canoes (fig. 1.1), though laborious to make withour steel tools,** were almost as valuable and as necessary to their owners as automobiles are to us today. They were probably made of cypress, as they were in the Carolinas, and being up to fifty feet long, they could carry up to forty people.** Although they were heavy and rrough-shaped, with expert paddling they could be propelled faster than English rowboats or even large English craft in any but the most favorable wind. In the skirmish on the Potomac River in which Henry Spelman was killed in 1623, the English pinnace was taken, but “the shipp” was too fast for the warriors in canoes.” Both sexes of Indians in both the North Carolina coastal region and the Creek country were proficient in canocing; the same was probably true for the Powhatans, whose women foraged along the waterways as much as the men did.* In the continent's interior, waterways provided the routes with fewest obstacles to cross, thanks to water’s seeking its own level. The favored ways through the eastern Appalachians lay along the few rivers, such as the James, the Potomac, and the Delaware, that cut straight through them. Only when people were in a hurry, as Fallam and his Saponi guide were in 1671, did they take a more direct road up and down the mountain slopes—and then they were following established paths. Ordinarily Indian people considered it worth the extra mileage to go by river, especially if there were disabled people in the party.” It was possible to go very long distances and stay almost entirely on the waterways (fig. 1.2). For instance, Augustine Herrman recorded that a major route from the Ohio River to Maryland went up the Ohio, up its tributary the Allegheny, up its tributary the Conemaugh in turn, across a short portage, down the Juniata, and down its parent stream the Susquehanna. The CherThe Powhatans as Travelers 31 at ee en vee 4 Fig. 1.1. John White’s painting of an Indian canoe in use, Pamlico region, 1585. (Courtesy of the University of North Carolina Press and the British Museum) okces and other mountain people were able to raid enemies on the Ohio River by paddling down the French Broad, the Little Tennessee, and finall the Tennessee River (sometimes known as the Cherokee River) snl then up the Ohio itself.5' The only hindrance to encounter, other cits rapids wae strong downriver currents (especially in the spring), and that only applied if one were heading upstream. The most common canoes in the Eastern Woodlands were dugouts, made from a wide variety of trees. Only in the north, where the paper birch grew, could birchbark canoes be made; these were lighter and therefore faster cia